


Of Days and Knights

by peppermintchild



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 14:04:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3252533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermintchild/pseuds/peppermintchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Integra goes in search of a knight and instead finds a vampiric servant left by her father; Alucard may be obedient, but he’s kind and cruel in equal measures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Integra was twelve years old when - over the course of three days - she lost her father, inherited the family business, killed her uncle, and accidentally became the master of a bloodthirsty and probably-insane vampire she found chained up in the basement; there's many stories to be told here - these are a few of them. Updates will be sporadic, but they will be coming.

Integra’s steady breathing was the only sound in the cell. She knew he was a vampire – that he didn’t need to breathe except to talk – but the lack of sound and air escaping the vampire’s lips, his long hair utterly unmoving in front of his face, was incredibly unsettling.

Her shoulder ached, God how it ached. She carefully lowered the gun and slumped against the cell wall, the heat radiating from her wound being soothed by the cool stones. The vampire brought his outstretched arm down to his side, but otherwise remained still.

                “Alucard, your name is.”

                “Yes, my master.”

                “How did you come to be here?”

She heard the intake of his breath, a rasping noise fit for a corpse.

                “Your father locked me away.” He turned to look at her, “and now you’ve released me.”

A smile broke over his face, and she fought not to panic – if she was to die here then she would do so with her pride still intact, not screaming and terrified like her uncle. She would die fighting, with all the dignity befitting a Hellsing.

The gun felt heavy in her hand.

                “What are you going to do now that you are released?”

The vampire – Alucard, he called himself – laughed lowly and the red of his eyes seemed to glow.

                “I’m going to lap up every last drop of blood on the floors of my cell and feast upon the corpses of the men who would dare to hurt my master, but first –“ he leant over her and tore the fabric of her blouse around her injured shoulder, extending his tongue obscenely as he made for her still-bleeding wound.

Integra took a deep breath and closed her eyes, fingers on her injured arm struggling to grasp the gun. She tried to remember her prayers and her lessons.

Alucard’s tongue was cool, blissfully so against the wound, but the feel of something dragging itself across the damaged nerves was excruciating and her weak fingers dropped the gun in her lap – worst of all she couldn’t help but cry out, though she’d just sworn not to show such weakness. The tongue pressed against her a second time and then disappeared.

Integra slowly opened her eyes and saw Alucard returning to his kneeled position.

                “I’ve closed the wound on your shoulder for now,” he said, “but unless you wish for me to turn you into a vampire, you’ll need to have a doctor see to it.”

She stared at him blankly and he smiled again, teeth a shocking white against his blood-stained face.

                “ _Do_ you want me to turn you? Your blood is virginal and pure, and you’d make a beautiful draculina.”

                “ _NO!_ I will _never_ taint my soul to become one such as you – _never!_ ” Integra felt her blood boil at the mere suggestion and she struggled to get to her feet.

To her shame she had to accept help from Alucard to stand, his grip on her uninjured arm and her waist was steady and strong, but she was relieved when he removed his hands from her once more.

                “You said I am your master.”

                “As your father was before you, and his father before him – I am bound to you family line, and live to serve, _my master_.”

                “You’re not living.”

He laughed quietly, “a minor technicality. With your father dead you are my new master, give me orders and I cannot refuse.”

She concentrated on keeping her breathing even.

                “If I order you to stay in this cell, will you?”

                “Of course,” his eyes shone again, “why would I want to leave when you’ve so kindly provided me with such a feast?”

Integra’s gaze unwillingly fell to the bodies on the floor: men torn apart and her uncle – God, her uncle – still bleeding out, though slower now that his heart was no longer beating. Blood coated the walls in sickening stripes and she could feel some soaking into her socks. She hoped it was her own and fought back the waves of nausea assaulting her.

                “Will you need assistance getting up the stairs?”

The vampire’s question was quiet – subdued – and almost caring, to Integra’s ears. She shook her head.

                “I can manage. It’s only my shoulder that’s injured.” She made eye contact with her unlikely protector and held back a shudder at what she saw there, “You will stay here un- until I come back. You will not leave this room.”

He inclined his head in a deferential bow, “yes, my master.”

Integra took a few deep breaths and started carefully making her way across the cell, stepping over a hand and resolutely not looking into the faces of the men lying beneath her. Her shoulder, though no longer bleeding, was still aching and the pain and nausea was making her head spin – she didn’t realise she had slipped in the blood until Alucard had already caught her, mere inches from the floor and face-to-face with Uncle Richard, his jaw slack and dead eyes wide open.

Integra choked back a sob and allowed herself to be lifted into the vampire’s arms and carried like a small child up the stairs and out of the dungeons, she buried her face into his shoulder and whispered prayers to herself to try and stop the flow of tears. He carried her silently and she was once again reminded of his death – no rise and fall of his chest, nor any heartbeat to be heard.

He stopped as they came into the foyer and seemed to scan the room as though not sure what he was looking for.

                “The phone is in the south corner,” she mumbled into his jacket, and he obediently turned on his heel and walked in that direction. Integra felt as though she were floating rather than being carried, he held her still and steady and she couldn’t even feel a so much as a gentle rock or shift of balance as he made each step – it was as though he were gliding rather than walking. The stillness, like that in his chest, was unnatural and chilled her more than his cold body did.

There was a small armchair by the phone which she was deposited in with just as much grace and care as she’d been carried. Dimly she realised her shoulder had reopened – from the fall, no doubt – but, as if sensing her fear, the vampire did not seal it with his tongue again and instead tore the ripped sleeve off her shirt and folded it before pressing it onto the wound to stem the flow of blood.

                “Shall I call for you?”

The blood that had covered his face and hair was now clean gone, as though absorbed into his body. She felt dizzy.

                “No, I will call myself. You are to return to the cell and remain there. You are not to interfere with any living humans.”

                “Of course master,” he bowed his head once more and then turned and began his walk back into the dungeons. Integra dimly noticed the blood on her legs and shoes was gone, like it had never been there.

She picked up the phone.


	2. two

Integra slept dreamlessly, a product of the medication given to her no doubt, as she’d always been a vivid dreamer. She briefly considered pulling the blankets over her head and going back to sleep, but the pain in her shoulder was verging on agonising, even if she had been willing to shirk her duties for the day.

All the servants that normally lived and worked on the property were gone, fired by her uncle perhaps? That would be one way to hide his unsuitability for running the Helsing Organisation – get rid of anyone who knew how things were supposed to run and fill the ranks only with those who would be blindly loyal to him and not question his actions or motives. She would have to call everyone and ask them to return to their jobs, but she wasn’t sure who ran what other than Walter.

It would be a problem for tomorrow, most likely. She could hardly ask the staff to return when there was a vampire living under their feet.

~

 

Integra made her way through the passageways in the dungeon at a much slower pace than she had the day before. She hadn’t had time to notice then, but the walls were damp and the air had an unpleasant scent which did nothing to put her mind at ease.

As she walked she tried to think of what she would say, but she was drawing a blank. It wasn’t a situation she had ever expected to be in, after all. The vampire had said his name was Alucard, or rather that ‘Alucard’ was what her father had called him – so it wasn’t his true name. Either her father had a terrible sense of humour or he wasn’t trying to be subtle about who this vampire was. It would seem that Integra had Count Dracula hidden away under her house. Wouldn’t that be something to write about in literature class next year?

If she could still go to school, that is. She was now the leader of the Hellsing Organisation – originally she’d assumed that she could delegate the more day-to-day running of the Organisation to her Uncle so that she could finish school, but that wouldn’t be an option anymore.

Integra took a moment to steady herself against one of the walls and try and calm her mind – it wouldn’t do to go in there half-scared over the happenings of the previous day and of the future, not when she had more than enough to be scared of in the present.

 

Faced with the door Integra was suddenly unsure of herself. To knock, or not to knock? It seemed trivial, but in another sense vitally important. If Alucard was truly unable to refuse any of her commands then she would have no need to knock, his approval for her to enter or not would be of no importance; at the same time she didn’t want to antagonise the creature by appearing rude.

She knocked.

The door swung open to reveal the room empty of blood and corpses and instead with a long, dark coffin in the centre, the lid leant against its side, and Alucard sitting upright within it staring at her.

                “Hello.” His voice resonated within the bricks and stone, causing Integra to shiver.

They stared at one another for a few moments before she spoke:

                “Hello, Alucard.”

He grinned and stood up, stepping out of the coffin and kneeling at the base of the stairs – the picture of the deferential servant before his master. The coffin lid silently closed itself.

                “Would you like to come in, Master? I’ve cleaned the mess that we made last night.”

                “No thank you,” she said quickly, before breathing deeply and calming herself. “I’m… where did you get that coffin?”

Alucard stood as his smile dimmed.

                “It’s mine. I found it stored in one of the old rooms I used to call home before I was sealed away in here. I’m thankful no one sought to destroy it, else I would have been quite put out.”

Integra felt keenly aware that she’d just woken a vampire from his sleep, and that he likely wasn’t pleased about it. Her hand slipped behind her back to rest on the gun she’d tucked into the waistband of her trousers. No skirt today, not when she was confronting a vampire.

                “I thought I told you to stay in this cell.”

                “You didn’t say I had to return here immediately after leaving you. I went in search of my last domain before coming back and gorging myself on the gifts you left for me.” He tilted his head as though trying to appear like a charming young boy rather than a monster, “after twenty years imprisoned I’ll need more blood than was left here to return to my full strength, but my coffin provides for me in ways blood does not – I didn’t think you’d want a feral vampire running about, would you?”

He was testing her, of that she was sure. Like a genie in a story he could twist her words to suit his own desires unless she was damnably specific. She hadn’t told him to return right away, that was true enough – who knew what else he had done before he took to his coffin.

He smirked as though he guessed her thoughts.

She wouldn’t satisfy him.

                “How much blood will you need?”

                “That depends, are you counting in corpses or packets?”

Packets – so he’d been fed collected or donated blood under her father’s care; there must have been a supply system set in place with the blood banks or hospitals, or perhaps it had been collected on-site from the soldiers. Donate a packet a month to the monster in the basement and he won’t come after your blood from the source – that had potential.

                “I’m not giving you any more people to feed on.”

                “What a shame, we’d got off to such a good start.”

                “And you’ll be off to a bad end if you disobey my orders.”

Alucard laughed, “Quite right, Master. Please forgive my impertinence.”

                “I’ll consider it.”

He smiled again, less meanly than before, and Integra had the strangest feeling that she’d won something from him. She took a breath to settle her nerves before walking down the steps to come face to face with the monster she now owned.

                “Right, if you belong to me now then there are some rules you must follow.”

He lowered himself down onto one knee with a pure contentment on his face.

                “Perfect,” he said, and the sigils on his gloves began to glow.


End file.
